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For Pat Quinn, recovery means volunteer work and no more voices inside his head telling him to hurt himself, even after everything from exorcism to burp therapy failed.

For Katie Feick, it means working as a physical therapist and no longer driving the streets of central Ohio with a noose in her car in case she wanted to kill herself.

For Frederick J. Frese, it means becoming the head of a Columbus mental institution that had locked him naked in isolation 12 years earlier.

These three stories from inside the world of mental illness show hope and that treatment can be successful — if this nation and its leaders are willing to move beyond rhetoric to commit money, time and effort to addressing the issue.

The best treatments for serious mental illnesses are highly effective. Studies show that between 70 percent and 90 percent of individuals show significant reduction of symptoms and improved quality of life with a combination of pharmacological and psychosocial treatments and supports — if they can be obtained.

“Just because we’re different doesn’t mean we’re defective,” Frese said. “It used to be something you didn’t mention, even if you were in counseling. It’s going to take time to get to know us.”

Frese, 72, is now a nationally recognized psychiatrist from Akron, a former member of the National Alliance on Mental Illness national board, and a sought-after speaker who has shared a stage at seminars with Dr. John Nash, subject of the movie A Beautiful Mind.

He also still struggles with paranoid schizophrenia and has been hospitalized repeatedly over the years. But it wasn’t until age 47 that Frese felt comfortable enough in his career to acknowledge his affliction publicly.

It began in the mid-1960s when Frese, with 144 other Marines under his command, was helping guard the nation’s thermonuclear weapons at a Florida air base. He became convinced that American soldiers in Vietnam were being brainwashed by the enemy — much as in the movie The Manchurian Candidate — and took his concerns to the base psychiatrist. “When I got up to leave, there were two guys in white coats at my shoulders.”

Frese was sent to Bethesda Medical Center for five months of treatment. “In my mind, there was nothing wrong with me. . . . It made no sense.”

He later went to school, earned a business-management degree and got a job, but the delusions and the voices, which he describes as “like a conscience but stronger,” kept nagging. He once took to the streets handing out money.

Then in July 1968, after moving to Columbus for a job, he was declared legally insane and confined in what was then the Columbus State Hospital, an imposing Victorian-era structure on W. Broad Street that was razed in 1991. At one point, the 28-year-old spent three days locked naked in a seclusion room without a restroom. To this day, he doesn’t know why his clothes were taken.

When he got out of the hospital, Frese went to Ohio State University, studied psychology, and landed a state job as a psychologist at the Chillicothe Correctional Institution. Officials spread the word that he was an alcoholic. Alcoholism, they reasoned, was acceptable, but schizophrenia wasn’t.

Frese recovered after numerous hospitalizations and a regimen of medications that he continues to this day. He learned to cope with his illness by recognizing the signs and dealing with them before they spin out of control. A dozen years later, he was promoted to head of the Columbus hospital where he had been confined. He also spent 15 years as head of psychology at Western Reserve Psychiatric Hospital in Cleveland. His speech pattern is still touched by the medication he takes for his disorder.

Once, he was told by another medical professional that a schizophrenic could never work in the psychiatric field.

He felt the rage that is part of his disease building inside and left the room before it took over.

“You can’t be one of us. I took that as a challenge.” But in his mind, he was shouting: “I’m Fred Frese, and I absolutely refuse to be ashamed of having this disorder.”

Feick kept the noose in her car for years. It gave her comfort knowing that if outpatient psychiatric treatment didn’t work, she could go through with her suicide plan.

“Part of my therapy was to finally take it out to show I could still get places, I could still function. But I had to have that safety of, if I wanted to do it, I’m going to do it now and I’ve got the stuff,” said Feick, who suffers from major depression with psychotic features.

Eventually, she and her counselor held a ceremony beside a trash bin where Feick got rid of the noose — “for now.”

Years earlier, severe headaches led doctors to diagnosis Feick, then a college student, with multiple sclerosis. After a failed suicide attempt, she spent years in and out of psychiatric hospitals. She once was discharged despite being on suicide watch because she ran out of money. She endured electric-shock treatment and battled side effects from medications, including a 100-pound-plus weight gain.

Twice she tried unsuccessfully to purchase a gun but was turned down, first in Michigan, then in Ohio, presumably because of her mental illness.

“I wanted to blow my brains out,” recalled Feick, now 59, of Columbus. “I was told by the psychiatrist that I would never work again, would be institutionalized the rest of my life, and be taken care of by my parents or the government.”

Again, the doctor was wrong.

There is no cure for mental illness. But Feick has learned to manage her illness, recognize danger signs and get help or take action to prevent relapses — all while living on her own and working part-time as a physical therapist.

She still wakes up every morning overwhelmed by thoughts of suicide. Hanging would be her preference, and when her mind races, she fixates on which tree branch she would use outside a local high school.

The suicide-hot-line number and a “choose life” sign are taped on the wall near her bed.

She often consults a binder she compiled, which includes an action plan for times of crisis, and she turns to a “wellness tool box.” It is filled with things to make her laugh or keep her busy, such as a bottle of bubbles, stuffed animals and phone books to tear if she’s feeling angry. On more difficult days, she calls the suicide hot line.

None of those strategies helped a few weeks ago, and Feick bought a rope from the local hardware store, made a noose for the first time since the one she tossed in the trash bin, and hung it in her basement.

But before acting on her impulse, she called a friend — an element of her crisis plan. For the next two weeks, Feick stayed at her friend’s house “and just kind of existed. I knew I couldn’t do it at her house because it would hurt her.”

When Feick was ready to return home, her friend came with her, and together they took down the noose.

At first, the voices Pat Quinn heard were helpful and sounded like his mother.

“I’d be driving down the road and I’d hear someone say ‘Pat, don’t speed.’ And I would stop speeding. They would say ‘time for lunch’ or ‘time to study.’

“I would say ‘Are you real?’ and the voice would say ‘Yes, I’m real.’ ”

Over time, the voices became threatening. They told Quinn not to eat, to stand outside in the cold and make himself bleed.

Nearly two decades later, Quinn’s story is one of recovery from a perplexing affliction. It took much struggle, heartache and many years before he was diagnosed with schizophrenia, and a few more for doctors to find the right medications to keep the voices and hallucinations at bay without smothering his gentle demeanor and quick wit.

“Do you know what the schizophrenic’s favorite Christmas carol is?” he asked, flashing a devilish smile before delivering the punch line: Do You Hear What I Hear?

Tom and Margaret Quinn of Zanesville suspected something wasn’t right with their son, the youngest of seven children, when he was in high school and seemed depressed.

“He went from a happy, healthy, popular kid who was good in school and at athletics, to one who wouldn’t even leave his bedroom,” his brother, Paul Quinn, recalled. “We sort of chalked it up to being a teenager and he’ll get over it, but he didn’t.”

After graduating, Quinn went to Ohio State University, where he first heard voices. He came home after his first quarter and never returned.

Mrs. Quinn, 80, started making meals from scratch without preservatives. They went to prayer groups, family counseling, a clinic in Chicago that treated mental illness through better diet and vitamins, and eventually to an exorcist.

“We had no idea what to do, so we went to this guy in Columbus and he claimed that illness was caused by demons in the body, and the way to get rid of the demons was to burp and cough,” Mr. Quinn, 85, said.

“We’d be sitting around the room and he’d say OK, everybody burp and we’d burp, burp, burp. Then he’d come around and put his hand on your shoulder and say cough, so we’d all cough.

“I said, ‘You know, reverend, if I had a can of Pepsi, I’d get rid of every demon in the state of Ohio.’ ”

Several years ago, his parents asked how they could help the mental-health community. Quinn told them to do “something fun. We don’t get to do a lot of fun things.”

Music had long been a focus of family gatherings, so Tom and Margaret hosted a sing-along in their church basement. About 50 people attended the first year.

Fifteen years later, the annual Quinn Family Bash has grown to a three-hour concert at the Zanesville Welcome Center, drawing about 300 mentally ill residents to the visitors center. Quinn’s three brothers, three sisters and several nieces and nephews return each year to perform music from the Rolling Stones to Johnny Cash.

It was a slow process, but therapy and expensive medications covered by Medicaid have helped Quinn, now 43, become more like his true self.

“His recovery has been nothing short of miraculous,” Tom Quinn said.

Pat Quinn lives in an apartment a few blocks from his parents’ home. He has earned two associate’s degrees and fulfilled a goal of being a role model for others with mental illness, volunteering up to six days a week.

“People connect with me when they come into my group, and they are mad at the system and know I’m not going to sit back and read a textbook and say take your meds and go to counseling and you’ll be fine. It’s not always that easy. Look at my life. I’ve been in the depths of despair and depression. It was miserable. The desire to die was greater than the desire to live for a while,” Quinn said.

“I’ve been in your shoes and I got better, and I am nobody special. If I can do this, so can you.”